00:00 A story that will certainly give you shivers
00:02 about a young American navigator
00:04 audacious named Tammy Oldham Ashcraft.
00:07 In 1983, when she was only 23 years old,
00:12 she went through a real journey.
00:14 Accompanied by Richard Sharp, her British companion,
00:17 she was in charge of sailing from Tahiti to San Diego in California
00:20 to deliver a luxury yacht.
00:22 But we all know how the ocean can show itself,
00:25 it is not always a long quiet river.
00:27 20 days after the start of the trip,
00:30 the two turtles were caught in a category 4 hurricane
00:34 with monstrous waves and violent winds.
00:37 Even if they were well faced with the waves,
00:40 the yacht ended up turning around like a beach ball
00:43 while it was caught between two waves.
00:46 The last thing engraved in Tammy's memory
00:49 before spending the next 27 hours stranded
00:51 is Richard screaming
00:53 as a huge wave hit their boat.
00:56 Later, she would tell her tormenting story in a book
01:00 which would then be adapted for cinema.
01:02 Tammy already had a solid experience in navigation
01:06 before embarking on the fatal journey.
01:09 She was very competent
01:10 and had already crossed the Pacific twice.
01:13 Leaving Tahiti for San Diego,
01:15 their journey first went smoothly,
01:18 but a few weeks later,
01:20 problems began to arise.
01:22 A tropical wind from Panama rose
01:24 and before they even realized it,
01:26 the storm was heading west, gaining in intensity.
01:30 Our duo had to struggle to reach a safe area,
01:35 the hurricane was moving at an incredible speed.
01:38 And to make matters worse,
01:39 the hurricane, usually short-lived,
01:41 lasted a long time.
01:43 Facing huge waves
01:45 and hurricane winds would be enough to give nightmares to anyone.
01:48 The boat was badly handled
01:50 and despite their preparation,
01:52 struggling with a sea of sand was an insurmountable task.
01:56 The boat was floating in the air
01:58 above the imposing waves to fall violently,
02:01 shaking the whole structure.
02:03 Richard was at the cockpit,
02:05 tied with a safety harness,
02:07 as he was zigzagging between the massive waves.
02:11 But then,
02:12 they found themselves caught in the waves of the Celerate,
02:14 these monstrous anomalies that arise from nowhere.
02:18 Such a wave caused the ship to execute a 360-degree barrel.
02:22 And that's the last thing Tami remembered.
02:25 When she regained her senses,
02:26 Richard was nowhere to be found.
02:28 The safety harness supposed to hold him to the boat was broken.
02:33 Having no one nearby to detect these distress signals,
02:36 Tami found herself alone with a long-distance radio damaged
02:39 by two weeks of uninterrupted whistling by the waves.
02:42 All she had left was a very high-frequency radio,
02:45 VHF, short-range,
02:47 which was supposed to return the soul after five days
02:49 due to the damage caused by the water.
02:51 She was alone and completely cut off from the world.
02:54 Tami had to rely on her basic tools to navigate to Hawaii,
02:58 a sextant and trigonometric tables.
03:01 By using the position of the sun,
03:03 she was able to determine her latitude.
03:05 And once she found her watch,
03:07 she was also able to determine her length.
03:09 It took time,
03:11 but she made it to Hawaii.
03:13 Throughout the period when she was lost at sea,
03:16 Tami has shown how ingenious she was.
03:20 She remembers trying to get the engine running again,
03:24 but some parts of the boat had melted on the propeller shaft.
03:27 Although she was good at mechanics,
03:29 she could not waste time trying to repair something
03:32 that seemed potentially irreparable.
03:35 Instead, she relied on her training as a crew master.
03:39 Tami also kept a journal of her time at sea,
03:42 always aware that if she did not get out of it,
03:45 it could be the only clue to what had really happened.
03:48 By rereading the journal,
03:50 she admitted that her mental state had been seriously tested.
03:54 But despite everything,
03:55 she was able to demonstrate that the instinct for human survival
03:58 was incredibly strong.
03:59 She wanted to live.
04:01 The hero of our next story
04:03 is a man named Steve Callahan.
04:06 His story, although it resembles a Hollywood movie scenario,
04:09 is almost unreal.
04:12 In 1982, Steve took part in a sailing race alone
04:16 across the immense Atlantic Ocean.
04:19 He entrusted his fate to a ship he had designed himself
04:22 and proudly named the Napoleon Solo.
04:25 It was a robust and reliable boat,
04:27 designed to resist storms and defy waves.
04:31 But an unpredictable time set in,
04:33 which tore the fleet apart and sank many boats.
04:36 Steve had to get on board
04:38 and sail the Napoleon Solo in Spain
04:40 for emergency repairs.
04:42 After repairing the boat,
04:44 Steve left again,
04:45 this time by setting sail on the Canary Islands.
04:49 He was determined to cross the Atlantic
04:51 to reach the sandy beaches of Antigua.
04:54 Unfortunately, his boat was hit again by violent winds,
04:58 leaving him considerably damaged.
05:00 Steve had no choice but to abandon his ship,
05:03 and he quickly embarked on an inflatable lifeboat.
05:06 Steve decided not to give up without fighting.
05:10 Before the Napoleon Solo
05:11 sank permanently in the depths of the Atlantic,
05:14 he dived several times in the tumultuous waters
05:17 to save what he could.
05:18 With a few essential items on board,
05:21 he fought against hunger, thirst and loneliness
05:24 for the next 76 days.
05:26 Fishermen finally found him
05:29 and took him to the nearest hospital
05:31 where he was able to begin his convalescence.
05:33 Now,
05:35 we could think that this is where Steve's story ends.
05:38 His incredible survival saga
05:40 has been shared in all the world's sailing magazines,
05:43 presented in many television shows
05:45 and immortalized in his own book.
05:48 But the record for the longest time
05:49 never to drift at sea
05:51 was beaten by a man named José Salvador Alvarenga.
05:54 We are talking about an individual with incredible resilience
05:57 and whose tenacity and will to survive
06:00 would quickly become legendary.
06:02 It is because he stayed drifting
06:04 for 438 endless days.
06:07 A professional fisherman,
06:08 José was not unfamiliar with the unpredictable moods of the sea.
06:12 His most difficult adventure
06:13 began one day like any other, in 2012.
06:16 It was the day when José and his fishing companion
06:19 headed to the shores of a picturesque fishing village
06:22 named Costa Azul in Mexico.
06:25 It was the first time they traveled together.
06:28 However, life had a bad surprise for them.
06:31 Shortly after leaving the comfort of the coast,
06:33 they were caught in a storm.
06:36 She swung their little boat like a toy,
06:38 making it deviate from its cape.
06:40 The engine of the boat
06:42 and most of their electronic equipment on board
06:44 were damaged.
06:46 José, not letting himself be disassembled,
06:48 managed to call his boss for help
06:49 before the communication device broke down.
06:52 But the response was as unencouraging as their situation.
06:55 For five relentless days,
06:57 the storm led them astray.
06:59 When the skies finally cleared up,
07:02 José and his companion were lost,
07:04 without any idea of their position
07:06 or how to get home.
07:08 To make matters worse,
07:09 the storm had taken away most of their fishing equipment,
07:12 leaving them with only simple survival tools.
07:14 Their boat had no sails,
07:16 engines or rams.
07:18 Month after month, they drifted aimlessly.
07:21 Their subsistence came from our good old Mother Nature.
07:24 Rainwater and a mix of marine creatures
07:27 like fish, turtles and other birds.
07:30 After four long months, José lost his friend,
07:33 but he decided to continue,
07:35 hoping that he would be rescued one day.
07:37 He did not suspect that he was far from being at the end of his journey.
07:41 He tried to report to all the ships passing by,
07:44 but his desperate calls were useless.
07:47 Resting only on rainwater
07:49 and what the sea offered him as food,
07:52 José kept track of his days
07:54 through the changing phases of the moon.
07:56 It was only a little over a year after the disastrous storm
07:59 that José finally saw the Earth.
08:02 His heart was filled with hope.
08:04 He abandoned his faithful boat,
08:07 preferring to swim to the shore.
08:09 To his great surprise,
08:10 he found himself on one of the Marshall Islands,
08:13 located on the other side of the Pacific
08:15 relative to his starting point.
08:17 José was taken to the hospital
08:19 where he slowly but surely regained his strength.
08:22 Upon his return, his family declared
08:24 that they had never given up on finding him
08:26 and were at the mercy of the angels
08:27 learning the news of his discovery.
08:30 However, this story of survival seemed so improbable
08:33 that many have questioned it.
08:36 Could a man really survive
08:38 so long at sea on a tiny boat?
08:41 However, there were those who offered a counterpoint.
08:45 Experts have advanced that the fresh meat of birds and turtles
08:48 that Alvarenga claimed to have consumed in abundance
08:52 could have contained enough vitamin C to ensure survival.
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